the movie is a masterpiece
This rating baffles me. Obviously, some things just don't translate well, but to be THAT misunderstood?
And I realize the defensive comments in broken English don't exactly help.
Oh, well.
I feel this is vastly underrated. I originally saw this with my sister in an episode of Mystery Science Theater, and while we had some excellent laughs, we noticed a few things:
-They never really tore into the movie harshly, they instead had fun with the goings on of the characters and events and added their own hilarious spin on them.
-We could if need be, watch this movie by itself without the crew of the Satellite of Love. We really enjoy watching this every winter, it has become a tradition in our household.
It's just a film that is different that what we were used to, but it is filled with a lot of charm and wonderment, and for a classic piece it still has very nice visuals. I honestly can't give this a low rating because I've grown quite attached to it. :)
I must agree with shock dingo. I have only seen this movie by way of MST3k, however, I believe it to be a very good movie. The acting is absolutely great, especially by the stepmother and most especially by Marfusha, one of my favorite characters of any movie. The story, sets and costumes were all great too. It's an all-around fun movie. I think it mostly gets a bad rap here in the states because of people associating it with MST3k.
shareI haven't seen the MST3K version (but I hope to) but I remember watching this movie as a kid and even then I thought it was plain WEIRD. On Sundays, there was a program called Family Festival (or something like that) and they played lots of movies about fairy tales that were always a little disturbing to me. I'm sure a lot of them were foreign and dubbed. I remember if there was time left over, they would fill it with "Little Rascals" shorts. I LOVED those.
shareJust saw it yesterday - it really is very pretty to look at it, and borrows from several different fairly tales. I noticed Baba Yaga, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel & Gretel and Sleeping Beauty, to name a few.
The troika at the end - the three-horse sleigh - is just gorgeous. They got it right, too, since the center horse trots and the other two canter and that is absolutely correct.
If anyone is interested, it's done that way because the center horse does the actual work of pulling the sleigh and if he's cantering he will jerk the sleigh at every stride. The trot is smooth and even and prevents the jerk. The outer horses canter because they are spares and are to keep warmed up and ready for when they are needed.
Look closely at the Pig Troika - they even have the center pig trotting and the outer two cantering!
Jack Frost/Morozko(1964) is a fun movie. However, it has a black and white message...as the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 already pointed out...that pretty people are good and ugly people are bad! I have dark hair, a big nose, and no jaw. I am evil!
shareIt is a fairy tale. Fairy tales deal with black and white, good and evil character-archetypes: the innocent, the witch, the orphan, the evil stepmother, the cruel king, the questing prince... The Russian fairy tale tradition, literary and visual, is centuries old and enormously rich. "Father Frost" is a wonderful example, but to all of you who seem to be struggling with the conventions of this kind of storytelling and film-making, I recommend reading Afanasyev (many different editions, usually collected tales with a title like "Russian fairy tales/stories"), and seeing some other of the movies--"Snow Maiden", "Ruslan and Ludmila", "Barbara the fair with the silken hair"... You may also want to look at the filmography of Alexander Ptushko (and of course Alexander Rou's other movies).
It's sad but alas not surprising that a beautiful movie like this has been ruined by Americans for Americans, who after all increasingly have nothing but the aesthetics of beavis & butthead and dumb & dumber to cultivate their taste.
I was with you until your xenophobic tirade. I'm an American - and a southern one, no less - who loves this movie and the source material.
shareIt's sad but alas not surprising that a beautiful movie like this has been ruined by Americans for Americans, who after all increasingly have nothing but the aesthetics of beavis & butthead and dumb & dumber to cultivate their taste.
Ruined how? With dubbing? That didn't really change the fact that the good characters were pretty and the bad characters were ugly.
Let's be bad guys. share